Gordon Brown Quotes

A woman said to me, 'You're better than your successor.' She then said she's lived under 10 prime ministers, and each was worse than the last. That put me in my place.

There is nothing that you could say to me now that I could ever believe.

It is time to train British workers for the British jobs that will be available over the coming few years and to make sure that people who are inactive and unemployed are able to get the new jobs on offer in our country.

Jubilee 2000 is a broad coalition which has moved the earth.

Every country is going to have to face up to globalisation, but Scotland has got a unique capacity because of its history as part of a multinational state to help us deal with that problem.

I don't believe that any prime minister would send our troops into conflict without the assurance from the military that they had the equipment necessary for the operation.

Getting married has certainly made a massive difference to my own life. So I am committed to giving support for family finances and having the right policies for work-life balance that make it easier for couples to have a rich family life.

To my astonishment, everything that I had assumed was now questioned by the findings. What started off as a search for identity that appeared to be purely Scottish in origin ended up as a discovery of my migrant roots - indeed an understanding that almost all of our families, at some stage, have been migrants - and my European roots.

When things are difficult, you have to be sure of who you are and what you want to achieve.

I am not going to the House of Lords. Never. That's not who I am. That's not where I am.

Indeed, Britain was set to repeat the old, familiar cycle of boom and bust. Since then, we have created and rigorously adhered to a new framework of modern economic management

Cowdenbeath Football Club have always been at the centre of Cowdenbeath - literally and in every aspect of community life.

Almost certainly, my ancestors had travelled by sea from Sweden to England in search of prosperity, and the evidence suggests they left Sweden around the ninth or 10th centuries.

We must understand that the British public's relationship with Europe is - and always has been, the sporting arena aside - about the benefits we can achieve in jobs, security, and quality of life from membership and how these benefits outweigh any disadvantages.

When you've got a society that is diverse, what happens is for a time, the issue is integrating your minorities into that society.

We spend more on cows than the poor.

Britain should be the world's number one center for genetic and stem cell research, building on our world leading regulatory regime in the area.

In just 25 years the glaciers in the Himalayas which provide water for three-quarters of a billion people could disappear entirely.

We need quantitative assessments of the success of education. We need certification and qualifications both for teachers and for pupils. It is not a choice between quantity and quality, between access and excellence. Both of these will happen together if people really do believe in the importance of education to change lives.

Our common realm is not and cannot be stripped of values - I absolutely reject the idea that religion should somehow be tolerated but not encouraged in public life.

I never subscribed to what you might call the neo-Conservative position that somehow, at the barrel of a gun, overnight, liberty and democracy could be conjured up.

To be a teacher you must be a prophet - because you are trying to prepare people for a world thirty to fifty years into the future.

Stability is necessary for our future economic success.

When people criticise you, you've got to listen to that criticism, and to learn from it, which I've tried to do.

Nigel Farage wanted to privatise the health service. Nigel Farage does not believe in the values we believe in for our public services.

Foreign policy can no longer be the province of just a few elites.

What is gained by debt relief and aid can be lost if we don't get a proper trade agreement in Hong Kong,

Britain does not want a return to boom and bust.

Why is playing football in Europe considered the pinnacle of our game, yet in other spheres of life, that same phrase - 'being in Europe' - is dismissed with suspicion?

In Britain, we are not a secular state as France is, or some other countries.

I understand that in the UK there have already been 10,000 complaints from viewers about these remarks, which people see, rightly, as offensive. I want Britain to be seen as a country of fairness and tolerance. Anything detracting from this I condemn.

Boom and bust is a term that applied to the Conservative years and two of the worst recessions in history

The growing evidence of climate change is forcing attention on carbon emissions and their reduction.

Turing was a quite brilliant mathematician, most famous for his work on breaking the German Enigma codes. It is no exaggeration to say that, without his outstanding contribution, the history of the Second World War could have been very different.

I did maths for a year at university. I don't think I was very good at it. And some people would say it shows.

When I lost the sight of my eye and faced the prospect of going blind, my sight was saved by the NHS.

I believe there is a moral sense and a global ethic that commands attention from people of every religion and every faith, and people of no faith. But I think what's new is that we now have the capacity to communicate instantaneously across frontiers right across the world.

This is a Budget for Britain's future to secure fairness for each child and invest in every child

Our new economic approach is rooted in ideas which stress the importance of macro-economics, post neo-classical endogenous growth theory and the symbiotic relationships between growth and investment, and people and infrastructure.

There's no point dwelling on the worst things people have said - there's a job to do.

If our economies are to flourish, if global poverty is to be banished, and if the wellbeing of the world's people enhanced - not just in this generation but in succeeding generations - we must make sure we take care of the natural environment and resources on which our economic activity depends.

People believe in the power of education to change lives.

If you look at the question of expenditure in Iraq, you have got to start from the one fundamental truth: that every request that the military commanders made to us for equipment was answered. No request was ever turned down.

The vision of personalised public services - meeting the individual needs of all our citizens - requires continuing reform in the way services are delivered

On this day I remember words that have stayed with me since my childhood and which matter a great deal to me today, my school motto: "I will try my outmost". This is my promise to all of the people of Britain and now let the work of change begin.

I hope the Spice Girls will come back, although it may be beyond even Bob Geldof to get that to happen.

I think it's important that people know who you are and ... can ask any questions they like about you.

We should demonstrate that in war, under Churchill and Lloyd George, and in peace, Britain always was, already is, and can continue to be a leader.

The world needs to face up to the challenge of climate change, and to do so now. It is clear that climate change poses an urgent challenge, not only a challenge that threatens the environment but also international peace and security, prosperity and development. And as the Stern report showed, the economic effects of climate change on this scale cannot be ignored, but the costs can be limited if we act early

We are entering an era in which national government, instead of directing, enables powerful regional and local initiatives to work, where Britain becomes as it should be - a Britain of nations and regions

Once government's objectives were economic growth and social cohesion. Now they are prosperity, fairness and environmental care

Let us think of ourselves not as 'yes' and 'no' Scots but simply as Scots, and let us be a nation, united again.

For centuries, individuals have been learning how to live with their next-door neighbours.

Our ability to connect as a nation with other nations around the world is enhanced dramatically by the Internet.

I had to deal with terrorist finance. And we had to, if you like, ensure that the accounts of people who were guilty of terrorist finance or using their accounts for terrorist finance were closed down. So we had to do asset freezing.

America knows it has got to deal with its deficit problems so that it, too, can promise it is making its proper and best contributions to the world economy.

Good strong banks are essential for every family and for every business in the country and extraordinary times call for the bold and far-reaching solutions that the Treasury has announced today.

The IIFA Weekend has my unprecedented support. The relationship between India and the UK is long standing and one we would like to keep developing forever.

I am happy for there to be a leadership contest. I think there should be

They should never have put me with that woman ... She was just a sort of bigoted woman who said she used to be Labour.

Those who write off our European heritage are, at least in part, writing off their own heritage.

Our mission is, in truth, historic and world changing - to build, over the next fifty years and beyond, a global low carbon economy. And it is not overdramatic to say that the character and course of the coming century will be set by how we measure up to this challenge

While Turing was dealt with under the law of the time, and we can't put the clock back, his treatment was of course utterly unfair, and I am pleased to have the chance to say how deeply sorry I and we all are for what happened to him.

The next election will be a flyweight versus a heavyweight. However much the right hon. Gentleman (David Cameron) may dance around the ring beforehand, at some point, he will come within the reach of a big clunking fist.

Collective European Union action could mean no hiding places for evaders, no safe haven for tax avoiders, and no treasure islands for money launderers.

The way forward is for governments to consciously pursue monetary and fiscal stability through setting clear objectives, establishing proper rules, and requiring openness and transparency - the new rules of the game.

We must then build a proper relationship between the richest and the poorest countries based on our desire that they are able to fend for themselves with the investment that is necessary in their agriculture, so that Africa is not a net importer of food, but an exporter of food.

The doubling of oil prices ... is creating a more difficult environment in which to act.

I love Scotland; I love the NHS. I was born into the NHS; I grew up in the NHS. My family grew up in the NHS.

Under this Government, Britain will not return to the boom and bust of the past.

The best way of realising our high ideals is to show that we have an alternative in government that is credible, that is radical, and is electable - is neither a pale imitation of what the Tories offer nor is it the route to being a party of permanent protest rather than a party of government.

In 2005 we have a once in a generation opportunity to deliver a modern Marshall plan for the developing world.

56,000 companies have already benefited from the schemes that we have brought in. If we have taken the advice of the Conservative Party, no money would have been used. As Barack Obama said only yesterday, doing nothing is not an option.

When something really matters, you should never give up or give in.

I think fathers, mothers, grandfathers, grandmothers - we should look at what young people are saying to us.

In every era, there are only one or two moments when nations come together and reach agreements that make history, because they change the course of history.

You need in the long run for stability, for economic growth, for jobs, as well as for financial stability, global economic institutions that make sure that growth to be sustained has to be shared, and are built on the principle that the prosperity of this world is indivisible.

Politics seems much less important today. When you see your young daughter smiling as she was, and moving around, it's a superb feeling.

The House has noticed the Prime Minister's remarkable transformation in the past few weeks, from Stalin to Mr. Bean.

We've got to be explicit that the road to greater economic success does not lie in this cosy assumption that you can move from a single market through a single currency to harmonising all your taxes and then having a federal fiscal policy and then effectively having a federal State.

I don't think Jeremy Corbyn's going to stay, he's going to go. He knows parliamentary party have no faith in him.

I once wrote a book on courage and what made people courageous. I found it was a strength of belief matched by a strength of willpower.

The motto of the old order in the City of London was, 'My word is my bond,' but the financial crisis revealed a culture quite alien to that heritage. The stewards of people's money were revealed to have been speculators with it.

What has become clear is that Britain cannot trust the Conservatives to run the economy. Everyone knows that I'm all in favour of apprenticeships, but let me tell you this is no time for a novice.

I have been fascinated by men and women of courage. People who took brave decisions in the service of great causes especially when more comfortable and far less dangerous alternatives were open to them

Britain can be proud of its response to the tsunami appeal.

The place of cycling in our society is set to grow, and I am committed to doing everything possible to encourage that.

There is a golden thread which runs through British history of the individual, standing firm against tyranny and then of the individual participating in his society

What is happened in the years since the Second World War is not a temporary truce. It is not simply a ceasefire. Instead of battling with weapons and armaments, people battle only with arguments and ideas.

I'm a great supporter of the European Union. I didn't support entry to the Euro, not because I'm against it in principle but because I didn't think it was economically right for Britain. But that doesn't make me any less pro-European.

Our equality bill is specifically designed to protect religion and belief on exactly the same terms as race or gender or sexuality.

Our approach is to reject the old vicious circle of the '80s-rising debt, higher long-term interest rates, higher debt repayment costs, lower growth, higher unemployment, then enforced cuts in public spending. That was the old boom and bust.

Britain was set to repeat the boom-bust cycle that led to 15 per cent. interest rates for one whole year in the early 1990s.

There are values far beyond those of contracts, markets and exchange

Meet the challenges of the time.

You can't just vote for yourself. All the time, you're thinking what sort of country, what world, what future?

David Blunkett and I both take the same view that it is scandalous that someone from North Tyneside, Laura Spence, with the best qualifications and who wants to be a doctor, should be turned down by Oxford University using an interview system more reminiscent of the old school network and the old school tie than justice. It is about time for an end to that old Britain where what matters more are the privileges you are born with, rather than the potential you actually have.

While you cannot deliver policies without principles, you cannot deliver principles without having power. You have quickly to move to a stage where, emphasising your principles, you build a programme, then call for popular support.

Britain must lead in Europe to intensify the fight against global terrorism and make our country safer.

I don't see politics as one or two people just making or delivering announcements - it's also about winning public support and the public enthusiasm. You've got to win public support.